A couple of weeks ago I visited my parents, near Manchester. Here's some pictures of woods I used to play in as a child, and also some appalling pruning of a tree that I saw.
Here's the path at the back of my parents' house, it used to be a mining railway, but is now a haven for wildlife, probably because as a strip of trees a few metres wide it is almost entirely "edge":Carrying on from there we headed past a gully that I remembered having much smaller trees in it!The really weird bit was coming to piece of ground that's split into two levels with a slope between them. We used to set up a ramp and jump our bikes from the higher to the lower level, but you'd struggle to ride through it now: Interesting to see what can happen to some bare land if left alone for 20 years.
One really cool thing we saw was a Great Tit making its home in this hole that a woodpecker must have made in a dead tree: Anyway, onto the poor attempt at tree surgery that we saw. This was on a bit of land just at the edge of someone's garden, so not actually part of the wood. They'd pruned off some lower branches using a chainsaw (probably up a ladder with a chainsaw meant for use on the ground...). Here's the results of their work.
First, the stump of a branch that they seem to have just hacked off, with no attempt to tidy it up: Then one that's a bit tidier, but where they overcut and went into the main trunk: And finally, one where they didn't make an undercut so the branch has peeled back bark from the trunk as it came down: None of this is going to help the health of the tree, opening it up to infection, etc. It'll be interesting to see how it's doing when I'm next up there...
We were in the woods yesterday, despite the rain. We cycled up on the electric bikes, as we like to avoid driving up and down the track, if possible, when it's muddy. Of course, there are times that we have to drive up and, and the same applies to other owners in the wood, but every time we go on bike that's one less trip and a bit less damage.
While I was waiting for a friend to arrive I had a look at a stream in one of the other patches in the woods, that a friend of mine has just finished purchasing. With the rain in the past couple of days it was in full flow: and further upstream it had spread to leave a wider wet area: I'm somewhat envious - it would be nice to have a stream this big in our wood too!
On the wayleave it's easy to see the animal tracks now that the leaves have died back and the ground is wet. Here's one that's used by deer and boar: When Ian arrived we had a walk around the wood, talking about the different things we're doing. He's just getting into forestry work, so we had a lot to chat about. We felled a few trees, giving Ian a chance to see some new techniques - though I took pains to remind him that I'm not a qualified instructor and he still needs to go on a training course! Here we are looking at how to remove a small tree that I'd deliberately hung up: By the way, I wrote a post yesterday on dealing with hung up trees.
Before we went home Tracy built a small fire to dry one of her shoes, which had managed to collect rain despite being under the shelter! Her shoe ended up smelling of smoke, but it probably made the bike ride home a little more comfortable.
We're up there again tomorrow, partly to work, but also because we have a class of five-year-olds visiting from a local school!
So, when I got a tree hung up on Thursday I thought I'd take some pictures of getting it down. Of course, it's better not to get it hung up in the first place, but sometimes it's unavoidable, and we all make mistakes from time to time as well.
Here's the hung up tree: The first thing to do is to use the cant hook on a felling lever to roll the tree. In some cases this can bring the tree down straight away, although in this case it didn't. It did get it off the stump though, which I also wanted to do. Remember to always roll the tree away from you, and bend your legs to lift the lever - reposition the lever as required during the rolling.Once the tree is on the ground, the next thing to do is move the butt backwards. In this case the long felling lever gave enough leverage. You put it under the butt, then lift and turn to move it backwards: In an older post I used a long pole to give more leverage, and also a winch when that wasn't sufficient.
After a couple of minutes pushing the butt back the tree was safely on the ground: and then easily snedded and logged: We were left with one other problem though - a branch in an oak tree that had been broken when the birch came down. As it was alongside a path I didn't want to leave it. It was too tall to reach with our pole saw, so I attached a rope to it: Then I retreated to a safe distance with the rope, and gave it a few tugs: bringing the branch down easily, to be left for bugs to live in: One final thing - we try to avoid killing honeysuckle while felling, as it is a vital food plant for the White Admiral butterfly. However, sometimes I wish we got rid of it all... This is why you have to clear an area around the base of a tree you're going to fell, and also your escape route!
We popped up to the wood Saturday morning for a few hours, to enjoy the sunshine and get a few jobs done. There's still quite a bit of tidying up to do, and it really needs to be done before the re-growth starts, which I guess will be in a few weeks.
We've ended up with far more oak brash than we need, so we cut some of it up today, separating it into piles of nice branches to keep and leave to rot down for wildlife: and the twiggy bits, which are being burned: We're keeping piles of twiggy bits in some places too, but if we kept them all we wouldn't be able to move!
On Tim's last day felling here, he took down the large hung-up birch for us (in return for keeping it for firewood), which you can see here: What's nice is that the root plate has remained stood up, with the pool under it: So, we were left with the big twisty chestnut. We'd wondered whether to leave it, but it didn't actually look that healthy, so we figured it would be best to coppice it and let it make a fresh start.
Now you see it: Now you don't: And that's the last tree down!
On my chainsaw training I learnt that there are several things you don't do with a hung up tree:
walk under it
climb up it
cut bits off the bottom of it
fell the tree it's leaning on
leave it unattended
You can see how we dealt with a hung up tree in another post here, using a winch and a pole.
So you can imagine my horror watching this video I came across on YouTube, which I must stress, did NOT happen in our wood, and I don't know the people involved, who thankfully didn't get hurt:
